January, 2008

The Mirror and the Muse: Female Artists and Surrealism

THE PARADOX OF THE SURREALIST IDEAL

The Surrealist man, while publicly proclaiming his support of the sexual, social, and artistic liberation of women, was unable to perceive the Surrealist woman as an equal or independent being. Running counter to patriarchal, rational thought upheld by Western civilization, the Surrealists valued the illogical, intuitive, emotive, and irrational. These very traits, however, were associated with those which women had been culturally conditioned to demonstrate and were therefore devalued in Western culture, since they suggested the powerlessness and dependency of the “weaker sex.” This ultimately created conflicts for women associated with the movement.

Most of the women associated with the movement (with some exceptions), made their way into the group through personal and romantic connections with male Surrealists. They maintained insider status by willfully acting as the “femme-enfant” or childlike muse. This was paradoxical because, although women gained access to artistic support and recognition through their associations with Surrealist men, the male expectations of the ideal Surrealist woman was not conducive to artistic maturity. Women who had successful careers as artists did not regard themselves as true Surrealists, and for the most part found their individual artistic selves after or outside the dictatorial Surrealist circle headed by Andre Breton.

THE IDEAL SURREALIST WOMAN AS DEFINED BY SURREALIST MAN

In Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, Whitney Chadwick explains that “Surrealism failed to resolve the conflict between the 19th century image of woman as passive, dependent, and defined through her relationship to an active male presence” (Chadwick,12). She goes on to say, “Male Surrealists encouraged creativity among women and demanded liberation of women from the bondage of home and hearth,” (Chadwick,14) but their general attitude toward women was patronizing. For all their preaching of liberation, male Surrealists held onto a repressive 19th century view of women as childlike desirable objects: beautiful, dependent, and not fully matured.

While dedicated to the overthrow of the bourgeois and patriarchal values of post-Victorian society, there remained a conflict between these ideals and true liberation for women artists. Following the devastation of World War I, Surrealist manifestos called for total social revolution in the forms of individual liberty, personal freedom and a rejection of societal norms including rational thought, economic slavery, and the controls of family, church, and state (Chadwick, 236). The ideal Surrealist woman embodied these traits. Independent, daring, and courageous, her uninhibited behavior defined her individual persona (Chadwick, 237). The typical Surrealist woman according to Chadwick was young, beautiful and rebellious. Truly modern for her time, she renounced the conventions of her post-Victorian upbringing and, usually without the support of her family, embarked upon the difficult path of an artistic career (Chadwick, 9). Admittance to the Surrealist inner circle was gained not through artistic activity, but through personal and romantic connections. The women in the Surrealist circles were admitted not because they were valued for their artistic goals but because of their imaginations, uninhibited behavior, and beauty.

The Surrealist revolution called for the reintegration of all aspects of the human spirit. The goal was to join the polarities of thought (rational and logical) with feeling (intuitive and emotive). In essence, they sought to integrate masculine and feminine human traits. These traits were united in the sexual ambiguity of the ideal Surrealist woman. Her outward persona fused these opposed traits giving her an air of androgyny. There was conflict between these goals and the reality of their situation, however. The men outwardly stated these goals of reintegrated tendencies, but they found it impossible to negate centuries of history and social conditioning in which feminine traits were not valued equally with masculine traits. The Surrealist man admired the independent spirit of the Surrealist woman, but he found it impossible to let go of his need to objectify her.

Despite her outward rebellious behavior, the idealized Surrealist woman combined sexual ambiguity with a compliant submission to the Surrealist man, giving her a childlike sensibility. Naive, youthful, and pure, the Surrealists believed that the woman-child, or femme-enfant possessed an intimate closeness to the intuitive world of the unconscious imagination. Meret Oppenheim embodied the idealized public persona of a Surrealist woman. Stating that “the spirit is androgynous” (Chadwick, 236), she possessed youth, beauty, creative spirit, uninhibited behavior, and a willingness to defy convention, while at the same time bowing down to the masculine Surrealist element. She was the true femme-enfant. Patronizingly, Max Ernst called her “a living example of the ancient theorem The Woman is a Sandwich Covered With White Marble” (Chadwick, 46).

The Surrealist man believed he could tap into the femme-enfant’s closeness to the unconscious, and use her as a guide in his own quest for his true self (Chadwick, 50). In this sense, he used her as his muse. “She exists to compliment and complete the male creative cycle” says Chadwick (Chadwick, 12). In this act, she loses her individual identity and absorbs herself into the feminine qualities that the man recognizes but does not posess (Chadwick, 35). Oppenheim argued that “...the ’muse’ is an allegorical representation of the spiritual female part in the creative male, the ‘genius.’ And the ‘genius’ represents the spiritual male part in the creative female, the ‘muse’...” (Chadwick, 12.)

Gala Eluard was the first woman to assume the role of Surrealist muse. She entered the group through her romantic connection to Paul Eluard, and later became romantically involved with Salvador Dali. In Dali’s The Great Masturbator, Gala is portrayed as an object of sexual desire. Her head melds with or emerges from an image of Dali’s own head. Her mouth reaches toward his genitals to arouse them from their flacicd state. Dali described her as a muse: “She teaches me the reality of everything. She teaches me to dress myself. She was the angel of equilibrium, of proportion, who announced my classicism,” (Chadwick, 37).

In this sense, one can see that the Surrealist woman was conflicted because even though she courageously defied the societal norms of the day, she allowed herself to be seen as an object of desire and a sexually ambiguous child. She submitted to the male dominance of the movement. This prevented her from maturing as an artist or as an individual because her presumed immaturity excluded her from truly participating in the Surrealist ideology. Instead, she had to “arrive intuitively at an ideological position created by men in her absence” (Chadwick, 87).

CAREER DIFFICULTIES FOR WOMEN IN THE SURREALIST MOVEMENT

Despite its patronizing attitude toward women, Surrealism did provide a supportive environment for them. Through their associations with the movement they gained exhibition opportunities and a community of artists with whom they could explore their inner creativity. Yet for a number of reasons, most women did not see themselves as true Surrealists.

Chadwick describes the needs of the femme-enfant and the mature artist as incompatible. As artists, the women struggled against this attitude, feeling excluded and isolated from the theoretical, ideological, and political issues of their male colleagues (Chadwick, 237). The Surrealist men wanted them in the group as objects of inspiration, but they did not truly want to include them in the politics of the Surrealist revolution. Breton defined the role for woman as her image projected onto the world and not elevated from it (Chadwick, 31). This left the women, and their artwork on the periphery of the movement. The first official exhibit of Surrealist work in 1924 included no work by women artists.

While the women gained a certain amount of exposure and support from Surrealism, it is safe to assume that the movement failed to meet the needs of its female members. Most of the women went on to produce serious, mature bodies of work, but only after they left the group or the height of the movement had ended. Surrealism’s idealization of the woman placed a type of pressure on her that was detrimental to her formulation of an individual artistic identity. Feeling excluded from the ideology and politics of the revolution, and carrying the weight of an identity imposed on them by men, most females refused to acknowledge themselves as true Surrealists.

This possibly explains Frida Kahlo’s refusal to be labeled a Surrealist. Feeling no affiliation toward Andre Breton, she claimed to paint her own reality. Other women struggled with their confidence as artists during their association with the movement. Dora Maar, who was briefly affiliated with the group, grew unsure of her talent and gave up painting during her time with Picasso. For both Leonora Carrington and Meret Oppenheim, the affiliation with the Surrealist group gave them easy access to discussions of their work, but they also became filled with so much self-doubt that their association with the movement became a creative hinderance. Eileen Agar was the only artist to enter the group as a professional, but the recognition she gained from the movement led to her self-doubt as well. (Chadwick, 73.) Lee Miller refused to act docile and dependent on her male colleagues, yet her image as part of Man Ray’s work is better known than her own photography (Chadwick, 38).

THE MIRROR AND SELF IMAGE: REJECTING THE MUSE

As artists, women Surrealists rejected their identities as muse in favor of self-awareness. For many of them, this need was explored in the form of self-portraiture. Turning the mirror on themselves, the self-portrait became a metaphor for the woman artist in an attempt to resolve her inner and outer polarities (Chadwick, 92). Compared to male Surrealists, who projected their inner reality in the form of desire onto an external being, women turned to the use of their own external likenesses as a device for imitating the dialog between the inner and outer realities (Chadwick, 92).

Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, and Frida Kahlo consistently painted their own likenesses, or created characters in their paintings that resembled them. Fini used her own image in many characters of her work. Many of the figures, such as those seen in Composition With Figures on a Terrace, have Fini’s her own large eyes, heart-shaped face, and long neck. She refused to be intimidated by Breton’s authoritarianism, and portrays Carrington in The Alcove: An Interior With Three Woman as a female warrior, overpowering and released from the image of femininity created by men (Chadwick, 82). As a warrior, she refuses to accept a world defined by male institutions and avoids falling into the trap of playing an inspirational object for the fulfillment of male desires.

Kahlo called herself a Realist and firmly rejected the label of Surrealist. She claimed that she painted her own life and that it was her vision of herself. Much of her work, such as The Two Fridas, is highly imaginative self portraiture that utilizes her outward appearance while at the same time revealing multiple inner realities. As an uninhibited exotic beauty prone to theatrical gestures, she certainly embodied many of the traits regarded as ideal for the Surrealist woman, but she found Breton’s intended compliment of calling her “a ribbon around a bomb” to be patronizing. As a great artist, she received the worldwide recognition she deserved many years after her death. During her life, she downplayed her work with a self-deprecating modesty, and publicly embraced her role as the wife of the great artist Diego Rivera.
In a sense, all Surrealist paintings can all be seen as self-portraits, or at the very least as explorations of the inner-self. With few exceptions (such as Dali), men portrayed the self as an internal landscape while women chose self-discovery through their outer image instead. The idealized notion of woman-as-muse was of no artistic benefit to the women who came to Surrealism. It did not allow them to have an artistic identity, so they turned to their own inner realities and histories instead (Chadwick, 70).

Leonora Carrington successfully rejected her status as a male muse. Like most of the female painters, she never shared the interest in Freud that typified the work of the male artists. Instead she turned to magic realism, autobiographical detail, and personal symbolism. Her use of the horse in her 1938 Self Portrait shows her bold reclamation of horse imagery from the Freudian symbol for male power. In Carrington’s hands, the horses and other animals act as intermediaries between the unconscious and the natural world (Chadwick, 79).

CONCLUSION

The male dominated Surrealist world created both opportunities and traps for its female members. Those who were initiated into the movement gained access as charming, beautiful objects whose roles were to satisfy male desire and complete male creative cycles. In the men’s work, the women’s images appear as erotically charged aspects of an internal Freudian landscape. To succeed as artists, the women had to develop artistically outside the constraints of group membership. Reflecting on personal histories, developing vocabularies of personal symbolism, and exploring realities of both their inner and outer selves, artists such as Kahlo, Fini, Carrington, successfully matured as artists in their own rights. For those associated with the inner circle, the role of muse projected onto them was finally overcome.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chadwick, Whitney. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd. 1985.